As California hunters went afield Sunday to fire their first shots of the hunting season at fast-flying, darting doves, they needed to know their days of using lead ammunition in this state are nearing an end.

Sadly, Lakewood-based, Democratic Assemblymember Anthony Rendon’s get-the-lead-out of hunting bill, AB 711, was passed Friday by the state Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees, which passed several anti-gun bills in addition to the anti-hunting, no-lead bill. The bills will go to the floor of the state Senate and Assembly and could be up for a final vote at anytime.

The lead ban for hunting ammunition more than likely will pass and go into law, likely by July 15, 2019. How much will that impact the tradition of hunting and the more than $2 billion industry lead-ammunition hunting and recreational shooting represents in the Golden State? A lot. So much so that the Department of Fish and Wildlife shed its long-running fear of getting politically involved and asked that the bill be amended.

As it’s written now, the bill, if passed and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will ban the use of ammunition by hunters taking any wildlife with a gun in California. It will require the state’s leading anti-hunting and fishing group, the Fish and Game Commission, to set non-lead regulations by July 15, 2015, with the ban to begin July 15, 2019.

On past impactful and harmful-to-hunting issues such as the ban on mountain lion hunting and the loss of turkey stocking in the national forest in San Diego County, California’s state fish and game agency was cowardly silent and typically inept. But give this regime credit for at least trying to stave off the financial hardships this unscientific, unproven non-lead law will cause hunters in California and the state’s bank account. It’s amazing how a bunch of bureaucrats get nervous when actions by their green friends cause large amounts of real green to fly out of their coffers in the form of lost revenue. That’s what the threat of the loss of lead ammunition has done to the DFW.

Rendon, who is nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-hunting groups and extreme environmentalists who lobby him with green, received a letter this week from Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham. The Director had concerns about the bill and proposed amendments. DFW is supporting the bill “if amended.” The letter states that DFW believes the “best available science” shows that lead “creates the risk of lead poisoning for wildlife.” That statement has been disproven by credible scientists in front of the joke that is this Fish and Game Commission now. And those – I am one of them -- who believe this lead ban is nothing more than another ploy by anti-hunting groups like the hypocritical Humane Society and other groups to end hunting in California will believe that until the last lead bullet is pulled from our cold dead fingers.

DFW identified three challenges the law presents to hunters, the state’s economy and overall conservation of wildlife. They outlined them so that even a city boy and environmental do-good soldier like Assemblyman Rendon might understand them.